How Amazon Wants To Force Actresses To Stop Lying About Their Age

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A federal judge has ruled that an actress who anonymously sued Amazon and its movie industry database IMDB.com must reveal her real name -- and thus her real age -- if the suit is to continue. The actress, identified only as "Jane Doe" in legal papers, claims her career has been ruined by IMDB because it published her real age, 40. Doe's problem, she alleges, is that she looks way too young to play a 40-year-old woman, and Hollywood discriminates so vigorously against women over 30 that she now cannot get work even though previously, she claims, "Plaintiff used the IMDb.com website to successfully obtain a number of acting roles." The suit is all about that classic Hollywood career dilemma: Whether a performer should tell the truth about her age and perhaps lose work because of age discrimination, or hide it in hopes of extending her career but risk being revealed as a liar. There is a lengthy Wikipedia article about actors who have lied about their ages. Sandra Bullock, for instance, has variously given the year of her birth as 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1967. Jane Doe describes herself as a performer who lives in Texas, and who has adopted an "Americanized" stage name because her original Asian name is too difficult for Westerners to pronounce. She signed up for IMDB in 2003, she says, but did not give her birth date. However, Amazon and IMDB used her credit card information without her permission to figure out her true age. Her complaint states:

Little do IMDbPro subscribers know, nor are they likely aware, that Defendants intercept, store, record, and use the information provided during the subscription process, including their credit card information, to research and cross-reference public records and other sources to gather as much information as possible about each individual subscriber, including, but not limited to, his or her legal name, age, race, gender, personal shopping and spending habits, and Internet activity, which acts are unknown to and not consented to by the subscribers.

IMDB then posted her true age online and refused to take it down when she asked them to. Amazon, which owns IMDB, has argued that Doe is attempting to commit a "fraud on the public" and the movie industry by lying about her age:

Plaintiff wants the court to advance her employment opportunities by compelling IMDB.com to conceal her birth date so she can more easily deceive the public and prospective employers.

The judge ruled that Doe's suit should be dismissed because she does not have good ground to sue anonymously. The ruling allows her to refile the claim only if she uses her real name -- thus revealing her true age to the movie business and the public. That, alone, is a huge victory for Amazon in its fight against actors who lie about their age: If the ruling stands, it will become impossible for any other performer to complain about IMDB without revealing their true age.